Last week Pope Francis described the slaughter of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire as “genocide,” joining France and 20 other countries in adopting that designation. The massacres and forced relocations of Armenian civilians began 100 years ago and concluded with the end of the First World War in 1918. Even Turkey’s German military advisers were appalled by what they were witnessing. Turkish historians have tended to argue that the deaths were consequences of the war itself, in which Imperial Russian armies overran predominantly Armenian regions in Eastern Anatolia, leading to a forced evacuation of a population that had allegedly greeted the invaders and was considered unreliable. Food and other resources were scarce or nonexistent along the largely arid countryside that the evacuees passed through.

Nevertheless, though wartime conditions might in part explain the scale of the deaths of civilians, there is more than enough documentary evidence to make a convincing case that Armenians far removed from the fighting were also systematically slaughtered as policy initiated by senior government officials. Not every official or Turkish soldier was part of the process, but many certainly were.

The usual Turcophobes have praised the papal pronouncement, while Ankara has recalled its ambassador from the Holy See and has expressed its anger. The Turks’ response is in part fueled by their belief that they were victims in the First World War as much as anyone, having been invaded and occupied by foreign armies during the fighting and in its aftermath. Still, while the concern of Ankara lest it be associated with a crime against humanity carried out on its soil is understandable, the intention either to kill or drive out all or most Armenians from Ottoman lands qualifies as a genocide if anything does, making it, as Pope Francis noted, the first such outrage in the 20th century. It was followed by Stalin’s starvation of the Ukrainians, the Wannsee program by the Nazis to kill or expel all European Jews, Pol Pot’s mass slaughters in Cambodia, and the horrors of Rwanda at the century’s end.

But one nevertheless has to wonder at the consequences of an ex post facto establishment of accountability for a crime that began 100 years ago in a now nonexistent political entity with victims and perpetrators who are no longer alive. When I lived in Istanbul in the 1980s I knew many Armenians well enough to be invited into their homes and attend their church services. I also knew Roman Catholics with whom I went to Mass, and had friends at the Greek Patriarchate, the Phanar. Christians were allowed to worship freely, but there was always a sense that they were being permitted to do so on sufferance and that it was a privilege rather than a right in an overwhelmingly Muslim country. I visited Istanbul again this summer, and the increase in visible Islamic religiosity was startling, so I assume that Christians are even more on edge.

Given that Christians in Turkey are still allowed to worship and associate more or less freely, Pope Francis’s declaration can only make their status somewhat more delicate, as those who see Turkey as a Muslim rather than a secular nation, including Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, will be able to play the nationalist card to make that vision a reality. The pace of the conversion of surviving historic churches into mosques will no doubt accelerate. In short, Pope Francis makes their situation more difficult in exchange for what I believe to be no actual net gain.

And then there is the essential hypocrisy of papal pronouncements. All too often the Church fails to live up to its own values. For me that occurred in dramatic fashion when Pope John Paul II conferred the appearance of Christian legitimacy on President George W. Bush by granting him four papal audiences. To his credit, the pope raised the issue of the deteriorating status of Christians in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East and called for peace in the region, but he did not do or say anything that might have a serious impact. If Turkey must be held accountable for massacres that took place in wartime 100 years ago, one has to wonder why the man who started a war unnecessarily, which at that point had killed scores of thousands of civilians and enabled the destruction of the ancient Christian communities in the Middle East, should be rewarded with multiple papal audiences.

I for one would have liked to have seen the pope refuse to meet with Bush or at least politely but publicly confront the president during the audience over what he had unleashed. Such a gesture could have had a real impact in the United States and just might have put the lie to the claims of success of the Iraq venture, which one still tends to hear on occasion, recently from Bush himself declaring that it brought “democracy.”

I understand that the sensitivities of the U.S. Catholic Church are important to the Holy See, and no pope would want to gratuitously contradict an American president, but it seems to me that the Church has a responsibility to bear witness as an antidote to ongoing evil backed by an assertion of Christian values. A public display of disapproval delivered to 78 million American Catholics might have served to restrain Bush-Cheney. And even if it did not, it would have been the right thing to do.

Which brings us to here and now. Concerning Pope Francis and his condemnation of Armenian genocide, I have to ask, “What have you done for me today?” The reticence of Christian organizations to get behind the Boycott, Divestments, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel in an attempt to help deliver self-determination and fundamental human rights to the Palestinians has mystified me. I understand that the Catholic Church does not want to make more confrontational its interaction with the often difficult Israeli overlords of ecclesiastical properties in Jerusalem, and the Church has its own priorities in support of Christian-Jewish dialogue that it would not want to damage. There is also lurking the issue of historic anti-Semitism within the Church, but BDS is a perfect vehicle for helping to redress a current wrong. It is nonviolent, nonconfrontational, and conforms with international law. Precisely what is boycotted, divested, or sanctioned can be tailored to specific issues like settlement building. BDS seeks to establish fundamental liberties for Palestinians, including the freedom to run their own affairs either as a separate state or as part of a truly democratic Israel that grants equal rights to all.

For Catholics there is also a personal stake in what goes on in Israel, namely that the Church has an ancient physical presence in Israel and Palestine that is diminishing and under siege. The abuse of Christian clergy and laity in Israel has been widely reported, and there are 50 laws that discriminate in various ways against non-Jews. The Israeli bureaucracy de facto aids the process by refusing basic services for non-Jews, appropriating or infringing on Christian and Muslim religious sites, and systematically denying things like building permits even if there is no law that is directly applicable.

Demands to turn Israel into an increasingly apartheid-like Jewish State will have additional real-life consequences, not unlike Erdogan’s promoting Islam as the state religion in Turkey. Some Israeli politicians are on record calling for the expulsion of all Arabs or creating incentives for them to leave voluntarily. Christians, many of whom are in communion with Rome, confronted by a government hostile to their interests have already done and will continue to do the latter, emigrating to find a better life within their diaspora community overseas. The number of Catholics in Israel declined by half between 1980 and 2008. The death of the Christian community in the very land where the religion was founded ought to be of concern to the head of the Roman Catholic Church.

To be sure there will be strong resistance to any papal pronouncement in support of any element of BDS. Israelis will unleash their considerable propaganda resources to denigrate the pope, including labeling him as an anti-Semite. Indeed, other Christian groups that have supported BDS, often in a lukewarm fashion, have been so denounced, including the Presbyterians, who recently divested from three companies well known for their involvement in the Israeli-occupied territories.

Media coverage of Pope Francis’s comments on the Armenians cited his outspokenness and “sympathy for all victims.” Apart from his reference to the “state of Palestine” on a visit to the Holy Land in May, any recognition of Palestinian suffering has been rather thin gruel. One has to ask, when the Roman Catholic Church’s sympathy will be extended in tangible form to the Palestinians?

A special committee headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s chief of staff, Harel Locker, has recommended a three-phase plan to all but do away with cash transactions in Israel.

The motivation for examining a cash-less economy is combatting money laundering and other tax-evasion tactics, thereby maximizing potential tax collection and greatly expanding the tax base. This is important considering the enormous strain put on Israel’s national budget by the army, healthcare system and other public services.

The committee estimated that the black market represents over 20 percent of Israel’s GDP, and cash is the facilitating factor. Cash enables tax evasion, money laundering and even financing terrorism.

Not credit cards – but credit accounts on their cellphones. New payment systems using technologies like NFC (near field communications) are already allowing shoppers to make even small purchases using ubiquitous smartphones and other portable devices,

Will Israel be the World's First 'No Cash' Society?The government on Tuesday authorized establishment of a committee that will examine ways to eliminate cash from the Israeli economy – the better to prevent citizens from cheating on their taxes. The committee will be chaired by Harel Locker, director of the Prime Minister's Office.

Cash is easily passed from individual to individual, and transactions using cash can take place without the tax man's supervision. Not so electronic transactions; with modern computers, banks can keep tabs on how much people deposit into their accounts and how much they withdraw, while credit card companies have an up to the second record of how much people spend.

According to many of these officials, cash is bad – because it allows individuals to get out of their tax payment responsibilities. Today, an enterprising tax collector cannot easily compare income and outflow. While he may suspect that a person living beyond his reported means is cheating on his taxes, there is no way to know for sure, without solid evidence. In a cashless economy, all records will be electronic, and checking who makes what and how much they owe in taxes – and collecting it before it gets to their account – will be a much simpler matter, the theory goes.

(31May)Staffordshire, England — The man we know as Shakespeare may have a different identity than who we refer to. In fact, he may not have even existed the way we previously believed. Truth seekers have credited Shakespearean works to a collective effort of several prominent writers during the 16th century.

Accredited with over 31 plays, just under 155 sonnets, narrative poems, and five other verses, the English poet, playwright and actor known as Shakesphere remains widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language, even the world’s pre-eminent dramatist. However, conspiracy theorists question the authenticity of his authorship, after discovering an unknown sonnet. Conspiracy theorists have also connected at least five of the plays attributed to the name of Shakespeare seemed “out of step” with the rest. From studying the remaining works, sources impute several members of a secret cabal “very similar to a writer’s club” were actually responsible for the Shakespearean works.

Anti-Stratfordians, after taking their names from the birthplace of the identity in question, believed that Shakespeare of Stratford was a front to shield the real authors’ identities, who for some reason either did not want or could not accept public credit. “There is reason to believe that, due to the subject of his plays, many of the nobles involved would have a motive to hide their identity to protect their reputation.” Sources say they met in secret, conversing with each other about the most current philosophy, science and literature of their day. Their views were so controversial and groundbreaking, they felt a need to dispense their ideas to the world. Yet in distributing their ideas to the masses, this secret cabal often “toned down” the academic wording and distilled their concepts in comedies and tragedies most of the public could understand. For this reason, many believe the man William Shakespeare lacked the education, aristocratic sensibility, or familiarity with the royal court. But truth seekers maintain the works were only written to “appear that way” to safeguard the identity of its authors.

The question remains about the identity of the authors. Sources trace the associates as Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St. Alban, William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby, and Christopher Marlowe, all contemporaries of the alleged Shakespeare. Sources in the truth seeking communities charge the club head was Marlowe. “Even [Marlowe] seemed the model for Shakespeare himself, due to facial similarities.” Marlow, himself an English dramatist, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era, greatly “influenced” Shakespeare according to traditional historical evidence, suspiciously born in the same year. Conspiracy theorists also note the idea of Shakespeare became the pre-eminent Elizabethan playwright after Marlowe’s mysterious early death, stabbed to death by Ingram Frizer in 1593.

The man apparently going by the penname Shakespeare and seen attending his own plays, sources say, was an actor himself intentionally chosen to portray Marlow. Sometimes, Marlow played the role of Shakespeare himself to account for his own absence from daily life. Sources are clear to note it remains unclear as for which company tropes Shakespeare wrote his early plays for, citing as proof of the multiple persons theory. Sources detail that early plays were mainly comedies and histories, regarded as some the best work produced in these genres to this day. Tragedies (such as Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, and Macbeth) were mainly written until about 1608, and tragicomedies, also known as romances, were later collaborated with other playwrights.

The Bank of England helped in the sale of gold stolen by Nazis after the 1939 invasion of Czechoslovakia.

A document from 1950 shows the gold bars were sold by the Bank on behalf of Germany's central Reichsbank.

The details have been made public following the first stage of the digitalisation of the bank's archive.

In 1939 the UK government said it had frozen all Czech assets being held in London at the time, but the sale of looted gold still went ahead.

Germany had annexed the Sudeten area of Czechoslovakia following the Munich Agreement, which was signed in September 1938, and then invaded the rest of the country in March 1939.

In its 1950 report, the Bank of England said, "at the outbreak of war and for some time afterwards the Czech gold incident still rankled".

Officials continued: "Outside the Bank and the government the Bank's position has probably never been thoroughly appreciated and their action at the time was widely misunderstood."

The papers reveal that in March 1939 the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) asked the Bank of England to move gold, with a then-value of £5.6m, from a Czech National Bank account to a Reichsbank account that they also held.

Some £4m of the gold then went to banks in Belgium and Holland, with the rest sold in London.

The Bank of England then sold another tranche of looted gold for the Nazi regime in June 1939.

The 1950 history reveals: "There was a further gold transaction on the 1st June 1939 when there were sales of gold (£440,000) and gold shipments to New York (£420,000) from the No.19 account of the BIS.

"This represented gold which had been shipped to London by the Reichsbank. This time, before acting, the Bank of England referred the matter to the chancellor, who said that he would like the opinion of the law officers of the Crown.

It adds: "On the BIS enquiring, however, what was causing delay and saying that inconvenience would be caused because of payments the next day, the Bank of England acted on the instructions referring to the law officers, who, however, subsequently upheld their action."

Other released documents show the Bank in a more favourable light, relating how during the war it sold saccharin and collections of postage stamps in exchange for foreign currency.

From 1942 that foreign cash was then given to RAF aircrews for them to use should they be shot down in occupied territories.

A plane flying from Liverpool to Naples was forced to land in France because a passenger was causing a disruption on board.

Plane from Liverpool Airport diverted because of disruptive passenger

The easyJet flight EZY7215 from Liverpool John Lennon Airport to Italy was diverted to an airport in Lyon because of the passenger’s behaviour.

French police were waiting for the passenger when the plane landed.

A spokesperson for easyJet said: “easyJet can confirm that flight EZY7215 from Liverpool to Naples today, April 30, diverted to Lyon and was met by the police as a result of a passenger behaving in a disruptive manner.

“The safety and wellbeing of passengers and crew is always easyJet’s highest priority.

“Whilst such incidents are rare we take them very seriously, do not tolerate abusive or threatening behaviour onboard and always push for prosecution.”

Last November, a post appeared on the blogging platform Medium which claimed that between March 1, 2014 and August 31, 2014 - a period of six months - some 80 employees of London's Metropolitan Police had "travelled to Israel."

This overlaps in part with Israel's unprecedented assault on the Gaza Strip, which lasted from July 8 to August 26. During 'Operation Protective Edge', Israeli armed forces killed some 2,100 Palestinians, including more than 500 children.

Shortly after the election victory that probably surprised no-one more than himself, David Cameron launched into explaining to the hoi-polloi what further transmogrification of the State is in store now that he’s got a free hand. He inter alia elated the audience with the following zinger:

“For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens: as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone. It’s often meant we have stood neutral between different values. And that’s helped foster a narrative of extremism and grievance. This government will conclusively turn the page on this failed approach.”

In other words, dear citizen, mafia uncle State will no longer leave you alone if you merely “obey the law”. Your “narratives of grievance” henceforth won’t be tolerated anymore!

As the Guardian reports, this means that now that the Lib Dems will no longer be able to veto Cameron’s more outlandish ideas, he intends to keep us all safe by fighting terrorism by means of an Orwellian thought police.

“A counter-terrorism bill including plans for extremism disruption orders designed to restrict those trying to radicalize young people is to be included in the Queen’s speech, David Cameron will tell the national security council on Wednesday.The orders, the product of an extremism task force set up by the prime minister, were proposed during the last parliament in March, but were largely vetoed by the Liberal Democrats on the grounds of free speech. They were subsequently revived in the Conservative manifesto.The measures would give the police powers to apply to the high court for an order to limit the “harmful activities” of an extremist individual. The definition of harmful is to include a risk of public disorder, a risk of harassment, alarm or distress or creating a “threat to the functioning of democracy”.The aim is to catch not just those who spread or incite hatred on the grounds of gender, race or religion but also those who undertake harmful activities for the “purpose of overthrowing democracy”.They would include a ban on broadcasting and a requirement to submit to the police in advance any proposed publication on the web and social media or in print. The bill will also contain plans for banning orders for extremist organizations which seek to undermine democracy or use hate speech in public places, but it will fall short of banning on the grounds of provoking hatred.”

It is actually hard to see what this bill could possibly “fall short of”. Given that any ideas that might be considered to “threaten the functioning of democracy” will require a special police permit to be uttered, we have to wonder if e.g. Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s book Democracy, the God that Failed will be banned in the UK. The definition of “harmful” provided above is quite striking. In order to be deemed too harmful to be tolerated by the thought police one only needs to create a “risk of causing alarm or distress”.

In light of this, we want to take this opportunity to apply for a broadcasting ban on David Cameron. The man is definitely causing us great alarm and distress now that he’s been handed the pants of power.

Google and Whatsapp will be forced to hand messages to MI5The Conservatives are planning new laws to force some of the world's biggest internet companies including Google, Apple and Facebook to hand over encrypted messages from terror suspects

27 May 2015Google, Facebook and other internet giants will be forced to give British spies access to encrypted conversations of suspected terrorists and criminals under plans to bolster surveillance powers.

New laws will require Whatsapp, which is owned by Facebook, Snapchat and other popular apps to hand messages sent by their users to MI5, MI6 and GCHQ about suspects under investigation.

The new power is to be included in a new Investigatory Powers Bill which will overhaul the ability of the spy agencies to monitorsuspects and intercept their communications.

The managing director of RBS Direct Bank apologises for the glitch and says all affected balances will be up to date by Saturday.

RBS has vowed that all payments will be processed by the weekend after a technical glitch meant some had gone "missing".

The issue has affected 600,000 transactions across RBS, NatWest and Ulster Bank.

RBS said the glitch with overnight payment processes had now been fixed, and that it was working to process all the transactions.

"The actual technical issue that delayed the payments has now been fixed and now we're making sure all of those payments are processed through so that by Saturday everyone will be in the right place," Stuart Hare, managing director of RBS Direct Bank, told Sky News.

He promised that short-term credit would be made available for any customers hit by the glitch and said the bank had increased the number of staff at call centres to deal with long waits for customers.